Editing John Street (section)

== Neighborhood Transformation Initiative ==

Street's signature program was the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI), launched in 2001 to address blight that had accumulated through decades of [[Deindustrialization|deindustrialization]] and population loss. Philadelphia had tens of thousands of vacant properties—abandoned houses, empty lots, decaying commercial buildings—that dragged down surrounding areas and concentrated problems. NTI aimed to demolish dangerous structures, assemble land for redevelopment, and stimulate housing construction. The program was ambitious: Street proposed spending billions over several years to transform the city's landscape.<ref name="kromer">{{cite book |last=Kromer |first=John |title=Fixing Broken Cities: The Implementation of Urban Development Strategies |year=2010 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York}}</ref>

NTI achieved significant demolition—over 6,000 buildings were removed—and cleared land in neighborhoods that had seemed permanently blighted. But the program's larger ambitions proved difficult to realize. The real estate market crash of 2008 disrupted development plans. Affordable housing construction fell short of goals. Some cleared land sat vacant for years without redevelopment. Critics charged that NTI demolished buildings without adequate plans for replacement, creating vacant lots where abandoned houses had stood. The program demonstrated both the scale of Philadelphia's blight problem and the limits of government's ability to solve it.<ref name="bissinger"/>